Foreigners Spell Sex & Others Poems

by Louie Crew Clay

Foreigners Spell Sex

Foreigners
spell
ES EE EX
when they don't want Johnny or Mary
to know,
but
we Chinese
have no alphabet,
have no easy
trick to keep
Cheung & Fong
away from
naked truth.
Even our character for intercourse pictures doors.

Learning to Steal

When I took back
the bright red and yellow
band of feathers
earlier traded for a piggyback ride,
Dad teased me,
calling me "Indian Giver!"
Only 12 miles away
in what had become
a white farmer's scrubby field,
150 years earlier
at Fort Stratha, Andy Jackson--
who later claimed to Congress:
"Toward the aborigines no one
Can indulge a more friendly feeling"--
plotted to steal Alabama.

Editor’s Note on Foreigners Spell Sex & Other Poems:

Foreigners Spell Sex & Other Poems is not Louie Crew Clay’s first work to appear in Eastlit. His previous published pieces are: